The Republican lawmaker who was the opponent to Kevin McCarthy for House speaker in 2015 until the Californian unexpectedly dropped out of the race told Newsmax his old rival will be a successful speaker, in part because of the controversial House rules changes he agreed to in order to woo many of the 19 “Never Kevin” Republicans who opposed him to the end.

“Kevin will do great with these rules changes,” said Rep. Daniel Webster, R-Fla., who spoke to Newsmax in his office Friday night, less than two hours before McCarthy secured the speaker’s gavel after 15 grueling ballots by the full House.

“He’s agreed to all the things I ran on in the speaker’s race in ’15,” he added with a smile. …

In predicting a bright future for McCarthy and the House Republicans for accepting the concessions, Webster said he was not worried about the dragged-out election and the inevitable narrowness of the election of the new speaker.

[I’m not either, mainly because people in the rest of the country don’t really care about Beltway feuds. They care about outcomes. If McCarthy and the GOP can work together under these new rules, then the past week will just be a historical curiosity. If they can’t, then the entire session will be the problem, not its first week. — Ed]